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I find myself working with feeds (rss, atom, json, etc) pretty often, and most of the time it's mixing these feeds together for a site, and it's nothing but pain trying to build your code to get every condition right, and it's a waste of time, money and resources.

So I've been using the Google Feed API for a lot of stuff, but now that's it has been killed (but not buried, yet [buried 2nd of December 2015] {given some more time 4th of December}) , I have to find an alternative. Here's the features that made Google Feed API awesome, and these are also requirements for any alternative:

It doesn't really matter if it's a paid service (within reason, of course), or if it comes with a free plan, but ease of use should be a priority!

Having to whitelist a domain which is allowed to request from said service backend is ok, or using a token, but having to subscribe to a feed from a backend is not acceptable, as we build these services for clients, who will not have access to said backends or want to use them.

TL;DR;

We need a service that converts any feed I throw at it to JSON from URL. Can cost money, or be self hosted. (which would probably be best, seeing what happened to Yahoo Pipes, and then Feed API...)

Edit

So, Google Feed API was buried today, and a lot of stuff is now dead. While I do generally agree that recommendation-questions attract opionated answers and spam, there really isn't any information available on the subject, it's feedburner or superfeedr that I keep getting results, and neither don't really offer the same functionality as Google's api.

Julian has a good point in the comments, no one can afford to poll all feeds in the world, but no one is asking to do that.

I would gladly pay per request to fetch feeds per request, I'm not asking to keep track of the feed 24/7, only when I ask for it. That's the main problem with Superfeedr, alongside the fact that it's not as easy to use.

Edit 2

Seems like I don't have to pay per request:

http://rss2json.com/

I would thread carefully with this one though, as it's free, has no information whatsoever and is probably going to have a hard time with the traffic as people start finding it.

There's also plenty of OS alternatives popping up on Github.

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Christian
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    And yes, I am aware of superfeedr which everyone seems to be so hyped about, it even advertises itself with words like "like Google Feed API", but it's not the same. – Christian Dec 01 '15 at 08:57
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    Christian, I'm Julien from [Superfeedr](https://superfeedr.com). What do you miss? We're really working hard to make sure we can close the gap between what we provide and what Google provided. Feel free to get in touch. – Julien Genestoux Dec 01 '15 at 10:37
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    @JulienGenestoux With Google, a single jsonp request would retrieve RSS data from, say, a WordPress blog. Your solution requires a callback url (WTF is that?), all types of configuration and your docs are horrible for a JavaScript developer. I use Angular and your wrapper no matter how hard I try will not give me my content. – Scotty Bollinger Dec 02 '15 at 05:49
  • Scott, please read this: http://blog.superfeedr.com/ways-to-use-superfeedr/ We're not google, we can't afford to poll all feeds in the world all the time... actual, google even can't, which is why they deprecated their API. – Julien Genestoux Dec 02 '15 at 08:04
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    I wrote an blogpost about a possible solution, when you have access to the server: https://lingohub.com/blog/2015/12/google-feed-api-is-no-longer-available/ – Betty St Dec 02 '15 at 10:27
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    @JulienGenestoux Where is it stated that Google deprecated Feed API because "they couldn't afford to poll all the feeds"? Or are you just assuming stuff? – Tony Dec 02 '15 at 10:35
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    I agree with @Christian Superfeedr isn't easy to use which is why I went for Google Feeds API in the first place. – Mark O'Sullivan Dec 02 '15 at 14:07
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    I have since ported my feeds over to Yahoo's YQL https://developer.yahoo.com/yql/ `select * from xml where url = 'https://news.ycombinator.com/rss'` – Tony Dec 02 '15 at 14:45
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    @Tony YQL seems an okay solution, but it's not a drop in replacement what pretty much everything is looking for at the moment. – Christian Dec 02 '15 at 15:28
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    @JulienGenestoux I happen to be developing a website that requires pulling feed from arxiv.org through there atom public api. I tried Superfeedr since yesterday and I was able to make it work, however, it seems that for any given feed entry, if it is retrieved once, it won't be retrieved again (http 200, but returned item size = 0). This is not desirable for me, because the arxiv.org api returns some sort of search result in atom (xml) format, I would like to have the full content (in json, so it could be consumed) every time I query the api. With google feed api, I don't have this issue. – Jerry Ma Dec 02 '15 at 15:29
  • @Christian I agree that YQL is not a dropin solution. Although it is much easier to integrate it into your backend than the convoluted superfeedr. – Tony Dec 02 '15 at 15:35
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    @VictorF they didn't really announce a date to anybody and everyone was caught with their panties down. I'd keep developing another solution if I were you, as this is most likely only temporarily. But props for Google for giving everyone more time. – Christian Dec 04 '15 at 11:48
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    Is it working again?! I had the same problem and I was developing another solution. But today, it seems normal. Users are commenting here https://developers.google.com/feed/forum – victorf Dec 04 '15 at 11:52
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    YQL is a dropin solution if you use my jQuery lib, it extends jQuery ajax to use YQL to implement x-domain for feeds (and html). https://github.com/rickdog/cross-domain-ajax-XML – rickdog Sep 25 '16 at 03:01
  • It seem to be the Google API does not work any more. {"responseData": null, "responseDetails": "This API is no longer available.", "responseStatus": 403} – Erich García Jan 13 '17 at 03:39
  • If someone wants to roll their own, you can use a library like Fractal, if you happen to use PHP. Similar libraries are probably available to other languages as well. – Christian Jan 16 '17 at 20:10
  • You can use YQL and if you want a JSON response you can track down your endpoint here: https://developer.yahoo.com/yql/ using the following query: select * from rss where url="YOURRSSURLHERE" and then do AJAX: var url = [THE ENDPOINT THE YQL PAGE GIVES YOU]; $.ajax({ url: url, dataType: "jsonp", success: function (response) { $("#news").html(""); for (var i = 0; i < 3; i++) { $("#news").append(response.query.results.item[i].description); } } }); – RoyalKing Feb 04 '17 at 09:12
  • No just hope that YQL is not dropped now that yahoo has been acquired by someone else... It is a nice alternative to googles feed api. – Mattijs May 07 '17 at 05:56

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